Seven in Ten Germans Turn to Complementary Medicine, Major Survey Finds

Nearly three-quarters of adults in Germany have used some form of traditional, complementary or integrative medicine at least once in their lives, according to one of the most comprehensive population surveys on the subject conducted in the country to date. The study, published in the journal BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, surveyed 4,065 people aged 18 to 75 drawn from an online-representative sample of the German population and found that 70 percent had used traditional, complementary and integrative medicine, abbreviated TCIM, at some point. Thirty-two percent had used it within the previous twelve months, and 18 percent described themselves as current users. More than half of respondents, 52 percent, reported a mostly or very positive attitude toward these therapies, a striking level of acceptance for approaches that range from herbal medicine and acupuncture to naturopathy and mind-body practices.

The research team, led by Tido von Schoen-Angerer of the Charité Competence Center for Traditional and Integrative Medicine in Berlin together with colleagues from the University of Bremen, the Charité, the University Hospital Tübingen, the Robert Bosch Center for Integrative Medicine and Health, the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg and other institutions, set out to answer a question that earlier cross-sectional studies had left only partially resolved: not simply how many people use TCIM, but which illnesses they use it for, and whether they feel it helps. To do this, the questionnaire asked participants about fifteen distinct illness categories and assessed health-related quality of life using the EQ-5D-5L instrument, a widely used standardized measure that captures mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain or discomfort, and anxiety or depression on five severity levels each.

The disease-specific results reveal a clear pattern. The highest lifetime rates of TCIM use were reported for acute respiratory illnesses, at 55.9 percent, followed by chronic gastrointestinal illnesses at 51.4 percent and acute gastrointestinal illnesses at 49.2 percent. In other words, the conditions most commonly treated with complementary approaches are everyday ailments—colds, coughs, digestive complaints—that most people experience repeatedly over a lifetime. This finding complicates a common assumption that complementary medicine is primarily sought by patients with severe chronic disease for whom conventional treatment has failed. While chronic conditions certainly feature prominently in the data, the leading edge of TCIM use in Germany appears to be the self-management of common, non-life-threatening illness.

Perhaps the most consequential number in the study is the self-reported benefit. Across the fifteen illness categories, the proportion of users who reported that TCIM had helped them ranged from 61.4 percent to 86.2 percent, with a mean of 70.8 percent. That is a remarkably narrow and consistently high band given how different these conditions are, from acute infections to chronic pain and gastrointestinal disease. The authors also examined whether this perceived benefit declined among people in worse overall health, and found that it did not: individuals with poorer health-related quality of life on the EQ-5D-5L still reported substantial benefit from the therapies they used. This suggests that perceived benefit is not simply an artifact of generally healthy people rating mild interventions for mild problems.

The study also tested a hypothesis that has circulated in the complementary medicine research community for years: that the popularity of a therapy in the population might track the volume of scientific research devoted to it. When the researchers plotted TCIM use across disease categories against global research activity in those same categories, no apparent relation emerged. Usage patterns in the German population, in other words, do not mirror the distribution of published studies. People are not choosing complementary therapies for the conditions where the evidence base is strongest, at least not as measured by aggregate research output. This disconnect between research allocation and real-world utilization is one of the study’s more provocative implications, because it suggests that public demand and scientific prioritization are currently operating on separate tracks.

Methodologically, the survey is a cross-sectional design, meaning it captures a snapshot at a single point in time rather than following individuals forward. The sample of 4,065 respondents was recruited to be representative of the German online population within the 18-to-75 age range, and the analysis combined descriptive statistics with inferential testing. The researchers reclassified their fifteen illness categories into the WHO’s ICD-11 framework, the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases, to allow comparison with international data. The study was approved by the Charité Ethics Committee and funded by the Karl and Veronica Carstens Foundation, which had no role in study design, data collection, analysis or publication. The authors note that the article was shared early as a citable, peer-reviewed accepted version subject to final editorial edits.

Context matters for interpreting these figures. Germany has an unusually deep institutional entanglement with natural and complementary medicine compared with many other countries. Naturopathy, or Naturheilkunde, has historical roots in German medical culture, and certain complementary treatments can be prescribed and reimbursed under the statutory health insurance system in specific circumstances. Previous large German health surveys, such as the German Health Update studies referenced by the authors, have already suggested frequent TCIM use, but the new survey adds the disease-specific granularity and the quality-of-life dimension that earlier work lacked. The 70 percent lifetime figure places Germany among the countries with the highest reported use of complementary medicine in Europe, and the 52 percent positive-attitude figure indicates that this is a mainstream phenomenon rather than a fringe practice.

The self-perceived benefit data deserve particular scrutiny, and the authors are careful about what they can and cannot claim. Perceived benefit is a subjective endpoint. It reflects patient experience, expectation effects, the natural course of self-limiting illness, and any genuine pharmacological or physiological activity of the treatments, all mixed together. For acute respiratory and gastrointestinal complaints, which often resolve on their own, high satisfaction rates do not by themselves establish efficacy. At the same time, patient-reported benefit is not medically meaningless: it is associated with adherence, satisfaction with care, and health-related quality of life, and it is precisely the kind of outcome that integrative medicine advocates argue conventional research designs underweight. The study documents what the population experiences and believes; it does not, and does not claim to, adjudicate clinical effectiveness for any specific therapy or condition.

The authors draw pointed conclusions for health policy. They argue that stakeholders in the German healthcare system should critically examine the high level of TCIM use, promote rigorous scientific evaluation of the most widely used therapies, integrate evidence-informed complementary medicine with conventional care, and ensure appropriate reimbursement through statutory health insurance. This is a notably balanced position. It neither dismisses the enormous public uptake as misguided nor accepts perceived benefit as a substitute for evidence. Instead it treats the prevalence data as a mandate for research investment: if seven in ten citizens use these approaches and most report benefit, the argument runs, then the evidence base should be built up to match the scale of real-world use, particularly given the observed mismatch between research activity and utilization patterns.

For the international readership watching the integrative medicine field, the German data offer a template for the kind of study that is increasingly needed elsewhere. By combining a representative sample, a standardized quality-of-life instrument, a broad set of illness categories mapped onto ICD-11, and explicit questions about perceived benefit, the survey moves the conversation beyond the crude question of whether people use complementary medicine toward the more useful questions of who uses it, for what, with what perceived result, and how that maps onto research priorities and insurance coverage. With 18 percent of German adults currently using TCIM and a majority viewing it favorably, the study makes clear that these therapies are already embedded in everyday healthcare behavior. The open question, which the authors explicitly place on the agenda of clinicians, researchers and insurers alike, is whether the scientific and regulatory infrastructure will be developed to match that reality.

Subject of Research: Population-level use and perceived benefits of traditional, complementary and integrative medicine across disease categories in Germany

Article Title: Treatment choices: insights into disease-specific use and self-perceived benefits of traditional, complementary and integrative medicine in Germany

Article References: von Schoen-Angerer, T., Wischnewsky, M., Jeitler, M., Brinkhaus, B., Ortiz, M., Hoffmann, R., & Kessler, C. S. (2026). Treatment choices: insights into disease-specific use and self-perceived benefits of traditional, complementary and integrative medicine in Germany. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-026-05496-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12906-026-05496-y

Keywords: complementary medicine, integrative medicine, traditional medicine, Germany, cross-sectional survey, health-related quality of life, EQ-5D-5L, health care utilization, naturopathy, acupuncture, ICD-11, public health